Official Newsletter of 12/17

Jinkies! Bitcoin is at $3,310?! DO NOT DESPAIR! As long as Bill Gates and Church’s Chicken champion the crypto charge, we’re in good hands. From chicken in Venezuela to Trump’s Mexican border wall, blockchain and crypto are popping up everywhere. Despite recent lows, 2018 doubled the amount of crypto users ending with over 54 million new users.

(taken on 12/13/2019 at 18:23:31 PM US East Coast Time from CoinTelegraph)

Love Robinhood’s no-fee trading and support for crypto? Well now they’re offering new checking and savings accounts!

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Government

Venezuelans Prefer Bitcoin

During the “12 days of Coinbase” promotional event, they used their recently rolled-out cryptocurrency ‘Zcash’ to distribute a $10,000 donation to 100 Venezuelan families in the town of Santa Elena. The gift will give $1 USD of crypto daily for 3 months. Locals prefer crypto to the Venezuelan fiat currency, ‘Bolivar’, due to the fiat currency’s high volatility and inflation.

Despite the donation, Coinbase has attracted criticism for allegedly trying to market their altcoins by using the poverty-stricken Venezuelan citizens as their vehicle. $10,000 from a $8 billion USD valued company? Maybe ‘Scroogebase” has earned their new nickname netizens have dubbed them. You be the judge.

All of this comes shortly after the Venezuelan government made their new cryptocurrency “Petro” a national currency in October. Officials hope that petro will cut the power of black markets and money mafias, but as Petro’s value soared 150%, the Bitcoin transaction volume in Venezuela simultaneously rose as citizens remained skeptical of the Petro’s stability.

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Crypto Regulation

CFTC Seeking Public Input On Crypto

The CFTC is at it again seeking info about the underlying technology and markets for virtual crypto besides Bitcoin. Their inquiry namely focuses on the applications of Ether and the Ethereum Network. CFTC hopes that this input will benefit their LabCFTC FinTech initiative.

Education

UCLA Launches Accredited Blockchain Engineering Course

Thanks to a donation from MouseBelt Blockchain Accelerator, UCLA is offering its first-ever Blockchain Engineering course. Although the class requires some background in programming, the class is almost full within a couple days after its announcement. Large entities like MouseBelt and the Ethereum Foundation have funded recent projects in Universities to encourage course offerings and further adoption.

Forget being a quant! According to a new LinkedIn report, “Blockchain Developer” leads the U.S. list of most rapidly growing jobs in 2018. Even Facebook listed five new blockchain-related jobs in the last three weeks.

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Daily Debunk

Bitcoin Doesn’t Waste Energy

Many claim that Bitcoin mining’s proof-of-work energy consumption is too high and is unsustainable. While mining does consume energy, Andreas Antonopoulos compares the energy consumption to a pregnant woman: “At current rate of growth, your belly will be the size of this building in just 5 years.” Guess it depends on whether you believe self-sovereign money and immutability in exchange are worth the electricity cost. 🤷

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What’s on the Horizon

Much like Anakin Skywalker, blockchain is highly impressionable. US Congressman Warren Davidson, the same lawmaker to raise talk of further crypto regulation last week, said that crowdfunding Trump’s Mexico Border Wall could get the job done. Despite his gung ho spirit, Mr. Davidson went on to say that the funding wouldn’t support the entire wall and some portions would have to use fencing.

Warren Davidson ~ “There are areas that you would want to secure with a wall, and if you look at the areas where you have secured them with walls, $5 billion isn’t going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China, this is going to build secure fences.”

Yoda ~ “Yes, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”